Telephone call processing and switching systems are, at the time of the present patent application, relatively sophisticated, highly engineered computerized systems, and development and introduction of new systems continues. Much information on the nature of such hardware and software is available in a number of publications accessible to the present inventors and to those with skill in the art in general. For this reason, much minute detail of known systems is not reproduced here, as to do so may obscure the facts of the invention.
At the time of filing the present patent application there continues to be remarkable growth in telephone-based information systems. Recently emerging examples are telemarketing operations and technical support operations, among many others, which have grown apace with development and marketing of, for example, sophisticated computer equipment. More traditional are systems for serving clients of large insurance companies and the like. In some cases organizations develop and maintain their own telephony operations with purchased or leased equipment, and in many other cases, companies are outsourcing such operations to firms that specialize in such services.
In any case, there exist today large and sophisticated call center operations maintained by organizations, mostly for-profit corporations, for serving large client bases. In many cases these call center operations are distributed architectures of national and even international scale.
A company maintaining one or more call centers for serving clients typically provides one or more telephone numbers to the public or to their client base, or both, that may be used to reach the service. In larger operations, these numbers are typically "toll-free" numbers, which bring an incoming call typically to a local switch, where the number causes the switch to access a processor called in the art a service control point (SCP). An SCP typically comprises a database maintained by a telecommunications carrier and a router, and has routing tables containing simple routing destinations.
After a call is routed to a call center, which may be one of several or many maintained by a service provider, further routing may be done. Rerouting of various sorts is done as well, depending on loading, further information elicited from a caller, special circumstances, and the like. Routing of calls, then, may be on several levels. Pre-routing may be done at SCPs and further routing may be, and almost always is, accomplished at individual call centers.
A call center typically involves a telephony switch, which may be, for example, a Private Branch Exchange (PBX). The call center switch is connected to the PSTN network by one or more trunks as is well-known in the art. Agents, trained to accomplish the host organization's goals, man telephones connected to the central switch, and in many cases other equipment as well, such as multimedia-capable computers.
For many reasons and purposes additional computer capability in the art has been added for call centers by connecting processors adapted to run control routines and to access databases. The process of incorporating computer enhancement to telephone switches is known in the art as Computer Telephony Integration (CTI), and the hardware used is referred to as CTI equipment.
In a CTI system telephone stations connected to the central switch may be equipped also with computer platforms, as mentioned above, so agents manning such stations may have access to stored data as well as being linked to incoming callers by a telephone connection. Agents may also be party to many network-based applications for enhancing client service. Such stations may be interconnected in networks by any one of several known network protocols, with one or more servers also connected to the network. One or more of these servers may also be connected to a processor providing CTI enhancement, also connected to the central switch of the call center. It is this processor that typically provides CTI enhancement for the call center.
In call center operations, especially in large and distributed operations, call-routing ability and efficiency is crucial. The time it takes to connect a caller to an agent affects customer satisfaction and hence business image. Mistakes in routing, connecting callers for example to overloaded centers or to agents not prepared to help with the client's difficulty or desire, is troublesome. Improvements in routing techniques and speed are therefore generally desirable.
At the time of the present patent application, telecommunications network providers have occasionally made available to third parties an interface to what they term Advanced Intelligent Networks (AIN), for the purpose of allowing businesses to make routing decisions about telephone calls addressed to the particular business, while these calls are still passing through the telephone network. The connections at which customer access to network routing is made available are termed in the art Customer Access Points (CAP). There are advantages to the businesses in making routing decisions while calls are still in the network. Firstly, calls can be routed more quickly since they do not first have to be delivered to one of the business' premises (call center). This speed of routing reduces time from a client's having dialed the phone to their receiving an answer from the business, which in turn improves customer satisfaction.
With increasing competition in all markets, increasing customer satisfaction is an essential element to survival for most businesses. Additionally, routing calls in the network reduces the costs to the business of most calls, since calls are not inadvertently delivered to an overloaded call center where they must wait, which accrues connect charges. Also, if a business were to decide to "overflow" calls from a first center to a second due to overloading at the first center, doing so requires a second call to be made from the first to the second center, thus increasing connect charges once again.
An advantage to the telecommunications carrier of providing a customer access point to the network is primarily one of improving the telecommunications carrier's competitive position vis-a-vis other telecommunications carriers, since the network interface adds value for the telecommunications carrier's business customers.
An important feature of customer access point routing techniques offered by telecommunications carriers is that a call is never actually terminated in the network. The call arrives at a switch in the network and the switch requests routing instructions from an SCP computer. When a customer access point is available, the SCP requests routing instructions from the customer's connected data systems. Since the call is sitting in the switch just as it would be were the telecommunications carrier to route it, it is important that a decision be delivered rapidly to the telecommunications carrier. Otherwise, the call will occupy a port, or position, in the switch for an excessive period of time, which will cause other callers to receive a busy signal.
Networks are highly engineered systems, and overtime situations are avoided by establishing a strict time frame within which a customer's data systems must deliver a routing instruction to the SCP. If this time limit is not met, the SCP delivers a default routing instruction to the switch and the call is sent on its way. Typically, if too many failed requests are received from a provider's customer, the customer may lose the privilege of maintaining an independent access point to the network.
Because of the tight time restrictions made on customer access points, it has not been possible at the time of this patent application for businesses to conduct elaborate routing decisions in the network by making use of customer access points. Rather, existing uses of customer access point routing are limited to such load balancing between several distributed call centers. While load balancing is in itself a valuable capability, there are many more valuable routing criteria that could be used if time permitted. For example, routing decisions could be based on sophisticated business rules.
An example of business rule routing may help to make this concept clear. A brokerage house, for example, might desire to first check whether a call is from a known client. Such a check can be done using the Automated Number Identification (ANI) data, provided by the network with the call, which identifies the number from which the call was made. If this number matches a known client number, then it may be assumed that the call is from that client. Next, the business may want the client's account to be examined to find out the client's characteristics. For example, clients with high net worth and active trading record who prefer technology stocks, might be preferentially routed to the group of brokers who specialize in high tech stocks and are active traders themselves. On the other hand, an equally affluent client who generally buys and holds a broad portfolio of stocks could be routed to a general broker who is trained to handle high net worth individuals (premium service routing). And, a client who has no money invested currently could be routed to an interactive voice response (IVR) unit, which can answer most questions without occupying an (expensive) agent's time.
The problem with current sophisticated routing procedures being implemented at customer access points within the network is one of time constraint as briefly described above with reference to "time restrictions made on customer access points". So being, any rules-based routing attempted beyond simple caller identification and processing the call to an appropriate call center would most likely cause that particular call to remain in the port or switch at the SCP for a period beyond what is allowed.
At the time of this patent application there are no network-level routing protocols or methods that allow sophisticated "business rules" routing, or other complicated routing procedures for routing telephone calls from the SCP to a final destination number, without terminating the original call in the network or holding it in queue at an overloaded call center for an extended period resulting in further connection charges.
What is clearly needed is a method and apparatus allowing sophisticated routing of calls to be performed by individual businesses at the network level (i.e. at an SCP customer access point) within the time constraints imposed on the customer access switches. A method such as this would save costs of reconnection charges and allow for the elimination of secondary company-hosted queue destinations where more sophisticated routing is typically performed.